Nostalgia
by Dahne
Summary: He’s seen it all before they have different sets of the same eyes, but these aren’t his to blind. Character death, but you knew it was going to catch up with him sooner or later.


He does it to remember what he wants to forget. 

The machine, familiar in the black-cat way, the burnt-hair smell that takes him back from the cold places he'd ended up. There might have been a choice, somewhere. Maybe he could have done something. Of all the thoughts he has, this is the worst.

There's no one to congratulate him for surviving.

Nothing's the same, but it still reminds him of a few thousand years ago, in the middle of nowhere on a routine check on newly commissioned stealth equipment (and it felt like a private joke, since the two of them knew it wasn't new at all) with his sources strangely silent ("I paid them off," he rasps later, laughing or coughing and choking on thick liquid in his lungs), when everything had gone so well that he'd opened the case with the finalizing papers a few days early, and the strain at the corner of his good eye in fresh memory crushes him, and the kisses that tasted like goodbye, and he knows that he must have picked something up from him over the years, because the torn sheet at the bottom is covered in the scars of things erased, promises and benedictions, and it says, _I owe this to her. I'm sorry. _

It's too much for anyone to bear, even him, but he doesn't stop. He remembers coming back, in a millisecond blur long enough to die over and over, remembers finding him there alone, gone in all but deed, and he remembers the smile when he comes into the range he'd halved so long ago, and the, _"I should've known you'd find out somehow,"_ that comes out broken between breaths, too careful.

And he says, No.

And he says, Don't.

And he says,

Please.

All he says is, "_You still have some time left."  
_

He flips the switch, and the throaty screams turn into ragged panting. He's trying not to gasp, trying hard, because he's there by him and he had to do it alone, he always had to take all the pain in on himself, the bastard. He tries not to hear it, but it's still there, the stupid boy saying, _I watched because it hurt.  
_

He says, Why?

His smile has red lines at the corner, and his eyes are clear. "_I told you. I owe it to her. "_

He says, That's not what I mean. Why did you–

He can't finish, but it's all right. He understood; he was only pretending.

_"I told you that, too."  
_

He thinks it now, what he couldn't say. _Why did you leave me behind? I would have followed you. Didn't you know that? _

And he knows it was because he did.

He doesn't look, because he doesn't have to. He's seen it all before; they have different sets of the same eyes, but these aren't his to blind. He tries not to think of the nights not long after he was young, staring at him in the semidark and thinking of the old gods.

_"I waited as long as I could."  
_

Seeing him is getting harder. He says, Who did this to you?

And when he says, "_My son,"_ he looks happy.

He hits the switch like an old enemy, and it starts again, though it never really stopped. A good interrogator didn't need such crude things, that told more than they extracted. A good interrogator can make the truth want to be told, can make it bang and arc fiery circles in his head until it has to be released or burn him alive, but that is not who he is here as. It's too much, he knows it's too much, just like he knew it was before, when he tried in his idiot pathetic way to stop it all before it could start, it was too much for the old man but it happened anyway, the sick vertigo of being caught in the inertia of something greater, with nothing he can change. It's too much, and he thrashes and screams and never breaks. It twists in him harder when he thinks how alike they are.

This is his prayer.

* * *

It was later that he knew what he felt then. Knew how the pain could dig into you and come out the other side, leaving you bleeding somewhere far away but it's all right. He'd lost count of the bullets after six. They understood him in a different way now. He could feel the heat and the pain and how still they were, in among all the living pulsing things, but it belonged to someone else, finally the pain belonged to someone else. He wonders if he knew him.

And it's farther now, because it's not important, and it's gone, and he passes by the people who had gone on ahead of him and he's thinking that he must be hallucinating because they look like they're playing cards when he finally understands.

And now there's only one, closer now, and he turns around, he's still smiling, and he says,

"You're early."

And he's never felt less of it, but Adamska says,

"Sorry. Boss."

It's all right.


End file.
